Political debates before and after public education

By Mencken’s Ghost

June 16, 2011

In 1858, about the same time that the public
education movement was beginning, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held in seven
Illinois congressional districts, following
earlier debates in Springfield and Chicago.

In June of 2011, long after the government had
attained a near-monopoly over K-12 education, Republican presidential candidates
performed in a staged beauty pageant that was mislabeled as a
debate.

In the 153 years since the Lincoln-Douglas debates,
annual government spending on K-12 education has skyrocketed from almost nothing
per pupil to over $10,000 per pupil, on average, and as much as $14,000 per
pupil in some inner-city districts.During the same period, the intelligence and depth of political debates
and media coverage have declined.

To see how much they have declined, let’s go back to
1858.In the debates between Abraham
Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, the format was for one candidate to speak for 60
minutes, then for the other to speak for 90 minutes, and then for the first
speaker to give a 30-minute rejoinder.

The candidates were not asked if they drink Pepsi or
Coke by a fool of a moderator from CNN, as was the case with the recent
“debate.”And if they had been asked
such an inane question, both Lincoln and Douglas would have had the wisdom,
authenticity, and backbone to tell the moderator in a polite, gentlemanly way to
jump in the hole of an outhouse--assuming that the audience didn’t beat them to
it and throw the idiot in the hole.After all, unlike today, the large audiences often had to stand in the
elements to listen to the debates, after traveling to the venues by foot,
horseback, buggy, or steam train.They
wouldn’t have been in the mood to tolerate idiocy, and, although they hadn’t
attended public school, they knew the difference between intelligent and idiotic
commentary.

So did newspapers at the time.Many published transcripts of the entire
debates, just as New
York newspapers had published the Federalist Papers in
1787.This wasn’t easy reading, unlike
the “See Spot run” writing of today’s newspapers and TV news scripts, which are
geared to an eighth-grade level of comprehension and thinking, which, sadly, is
the level of comprehension and thinking attained by too many graduates of public
high schools.

Newspapers were also honest about their politics back
then, identifying which party they supported, thus alerting readers to the
likelihood of political spin in that direction.Today, most of the spin is to the left, but newspapers (and most other
media) deny that they have a partisan bias, and most readers are too
indoctrinated in left-liberalism in government schools to know or
care.

Another difference between now and then is that
Lincoln and Douglas were not contestants in a beauty contest--fortunately for
them, since neither of them was a handsome man.Of course they ran for office before women had the right to vote, and
long before the majority of women would vote for a handsome, photogenic,
metro-sexual male like Obama, whose looks were much more impressive than his
political resume.

Self-educated, Lincoln never set foot in a free public
school.Another future president, and
Lincoln’s
favorite general in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, never set foot in one,
either.Grant attended a subscription
school that was a long horseback ride from the family farm.Before entering West
Point, he taught himself algebra.Much later, during his dying days, he wrote his 800-page Personal Memoirs, which would become a
best-seller and which, in addition to being a fascinating chronicle of the Civil
War, was an unintended testament to the intelligence and common sense of common
folk prior to public education.

It’s telling that a thick book like Grant’s could be
a best-seller even though the populace was far less formally educated than
today.Today, paradoxically, with record
numbers of Americans having attended college, there is an incessant barrage of
canards, distortions, sophisms, propaganda, pap, claptrap and inanities in the
news media, in TV shows and movies, in commercials and print advertising, and,
especially, in the political theater that passes for government in this
country.If such drivel were not
effective, it wouldn’t be so widespread; and if Americans were truly educated,
it wouldn’t be effective.

Examples of the drivel are endless, but before
closing, let me give you two.The first
appeared on the Travel cable channel in a segment on large motor homes and
campers.A commentator pointed to one of
the behemoths and said, “It’s made out of composite materials and is good for
the Earth.”Think of how stupid a viewer
would have to be to believe that towing a 40-ft. camper is good for the Earth,
whatever materials were used in its construction.

Along these lines, it seems that most product
commercials nowadays don’t mention the product, and, instead, tell a gullible
audience about the “good” works of the company in terms of caring for the
environment and giving back to the community, as if the company has stolen
something from the community.The worst
of a bad lot is a Bridgestone commercial.It includes the company’s slogan “One team, one planet,” and claims that
the company is “making a better Earth for all of us.”

Such horse manure!One of the main ingredients in tires is carbon black, which is produced
by heating natural gas to an extreme temperature.The end product resembles furnace soot, but
in much smaller particles, almost molecular in size.Before carbon-black plants were required to
install scrubbers, people living downwind were covered in the stuff if they
ventured outside.It would even
penetrate their outer garments and underwear.Then there is the huge worldwide problem of how to dispose of old
tires.And it’s not as if the production
of another main ingredient, rubber, is done by elves at the North Pole.In fact, the early history of rubber
plantations was marked by the worst aspects of colonialism, which would be one
of the precipitating factors for communist revolutions in Indochina, which, in
turn, would lead to the deaths of 50,000 Americans in Vietnam.

Those who believe Bridgestone’s environmental claims
probably also believe that the recent Republican beauty pageant was a real
debate.They can thank their public
school for what they don’t know.

_________________

“Mencken’s Ghost” is the nom de plume of an
Arizona writer
who can be reached at ghost@menckensghost.com.